The shock index: is giving the finger still offensive?

First MIA, and now Adele – flipping the bird seems to be all the rage for female pop singers. But has the gesture lost its power to shock?Many years before Adele stuck it to the suits at the Brit awards, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the economist Piero Sraffa were travelling on a train from Cambridge to London. It proved to be a key moment in 20th-century philosophy. They were chatting about Wittgenstein's idea that every proposition had to have a precise place in the axiomatic o...

Read full article Share article