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Scientists Wonder What Fingerprints Are For
Hugh Pickens writes "The BBC reports that scientists say they have disproved the theory that fingerprints improve grip by increasing friction between people's fingers and the surface they are holding. Dr Roland Ennos designed a machine which enabled him to measure the amount of friction generated by a fingerprint when it was in contact with an acrylic glass at varying levels of pressure. The results showed that friction levels increased by a much smaller amount than had been anticipated, debunking the hypothesis that fingerprints provide an improved grip. Ennos believes that fingerprints may have evolved to grip onto rough surfaces, like tree bark; the ridges may allow our skin to stretch and deform more easily, protecting it from damage; or they may allow water trapped between our finger pads and the surface to drain away and improve surface contact in wet conditions. Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our fingerpads' touch sensitivity."
I noticed this at the zoo watching a bunch of monkeys swing from branch the branch in a cage. The tree branches they had been given had been worn smooth through long use and every time a monkey grabbed on to a smooth branch I felt a jab in my fingers in sympathy. There is something bad about grabbing a smooth object and relying on it to save your life.
So maybe finger prints improve grip with smooth timber surfaces. Testing against glass doesn't sound very realistic. We didn't evolve to grip glass. Or maybe (as the summary suggests) it is something to do with detecting the texture of a surface to find a place to grip.
Of course they don't ask why people have unique finger prints. Maybe it evolved to make murderers easier to catch.
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It's obvious fingerprints were designed by our creator to help the Police catch murderers.
I also love how they never counterweight their centrifuges.
If it takes an equal amount of resources for the body to grow a finger without fingerprints then it makes sense that they not meant for anything. Not everything has to have a purpose.
Sounds about right. Such micro-ridges, I think, WOULD increase grip on rougher surfaces, which is what we would run into in daily life. Also, if those ridges - generally the top layer of skin - would rip off or shred, the damage done to the hand would be less than were it smooth, I would guess. IOW, maybe a safety feature?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
It's more likely for something used this much to have functional features than not. Fingers and claws have been around for quite a while. It's hard to imagine them not evolving useful properties. Of course, this can go too far. Try peeling a gecko from a wall, you need to call the Hulk to help.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
Throughout history, there have been lots of questions that science has not been able to answer. But science is not static. Over time, it has been able to answer more and more questions and close more and more of the 'gaps.'
For any theist, the 'God of the Gaps' defense is pretty weak. Just because we don't understand something doesn't require a God (or gods) to explain it.
This is not a rejection of theism, but simply a comment on science - just because we don't have an answer now doesn't mean we won't have an answer in the future. And not having an answer does not imply that there is a (or many) God(s).
Agreed. I'm not a scientist and to me the answer is as obvious as it is to you.
It is clearly a case of aliens genetically modifying the species to easily identify individuals; we do the same in tagging wildlife.
They use auto-balancing centrifuges.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Sorry.
I'll get my coat.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
There is a fair amount of evidence that they increase tactile sensitivity. We have nerves that are sensitive to specific vibrational frequencies. As fingerprints run over edges, then generate vibrations at frequencies we have maximal sensitivity for.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5920/1503
Maybe they work like treads on car tires... let there be someplace for liquids to move *away* from to improve grip. Or, maybe having "with oil" and "without oil" surfaces that can be selected by varying grip allows gripping different types of surfaces.
Also, grip isn't the only thing hands do. Wiping or scrubbing with your fingers requires some level of abrasiveness.
I suspect that there may be a connection between building calluses and having prints. Possibly, prints are just the way we make "tough" skin that is more resistant to injury.
"Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our fingerpads' touch sensitivity."
:/)
from TFA (sorry i can figure out how to use the quote function
how is this not obvious? where he have some sort of ridge like pattern (hands, feet) we have more sensitive nerves there. The ridges increase surface area of our skin which means we can feel more using up less volume
the star nosed mole is the perfect example of increased surface area for more touch sensitivity.
Hi 120795, I'm 939458. It's very nice to meet you.
Can I bum a sig?
The USA's National Public Radio show, "Science Friday" discussed this:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105310429&ft=1&f=5
The show talks about this result, and reveals that New world monkeys have similarly ridged
skin on the gripping side of their tails. Touch sensitivity, and resistance to blistering are
posited as potential answers.
More grip, larger surface, which means more flexibility, more nerve-endings - more sensitivity, better warmth-exchange, 'folded-up-ness', which means more protection from wounds, easier to clean (like footprints, the mud just falls out), 'little bits that stick out' - meaning more sensitivity again.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
With articles such as this, it's hard to tell whether we're being subjected to bad science or bad journalism. Both the summary and TFA quite categorically state that the "myth" of fingerprints being used to improve grip has been disproven. They then go on to describe how this experiment tested whether fingerprints helped when grasping an extremely smooth surface, and found out that they didn't (well okay, actually they did, but not by very much).
Finally, some alternate hypotheses as to why fingerprints evolved are posited, the first of which is: they may improve grip on rough surfaces. Not acrylic glass or anything, but those other kind of surfaces - you know, the type that actually occur in nature.
I'm pretty sure I don't know much more now than I did before I read the article.
Why do they have to be for something?
Evolution does not forbid random things, that are neither bad nor good for something.
Sometimes, humans try too much, to fit things into the artificial set of meta-rules that they did create, to describe the complex results of more basic and emergent rules. But those meta-rules have their own artifacts, that are not present in the basic rules and therefore are not present in the world. Like there having to be a "reason" for everything. A human concept that should describe causality, but adds something more to it, which does not exist in reality.
Other than that, it is obvious, that they enhance the grip, even in situations with liquids.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I am going to go with...They are for increasing touch sensations on the fingertips to increase detection of differences and variations in textures of objects.
Celestial barcodes. The gods are thinking of moving towards an RFID based solution but for now it works.
My view is that the reason science and religion come up with different answers is because they ask different questions.
Q: What makes a rainbow?
Science A:A rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere. They take the form of a multicoloured arc, with red on the outer part of the arch and violet on the inner section of the arch. The light is first refracted as it enters the surface of the raindrop, reflected off the back of the drop, and again refracted as it leaves the drop. The overall effect is that the incoming light is reflected back over a wide range of angles, with the most intense light at an angle of 40 - 42 degrees.
Religion A:It's a sign of God's promise to Noah to never again flood the earth. (Genesis 9.13-15)
Science, to me, is about observing the world, and hopefully learning something. Religion seems to be about accepting answers from thousands of years ago without questioning their merit.
But the appendix isn't on its way out, it's there for after you've had diarrhea.
The only difference between you and someone who doesn't understand logic is.. almost exactly nothing. Science doesn't require irrational belief, it is simply based upon more and more thorough observation and testable hypothesis', while religion is based upon shallow observation and wishful thinking.
The key difference to me between religion and science is that religious folks have to explain all new observations in such a way that it will fit into their current worldview, because they are terrified that conflicting ideas will mean their god doesn't exist. Most Christians in my family are terrified to look more into evolution, with the only time they view anything on it being when they read Christian articles to reassure themselves that it isn't true without doing any research. Scientists will simply say "oh well we were wrong about that, now we can record this new and more accurate understanding of things and keep working to understand even more". They do not let irrational fears restrict their thinking.
which is totally what she said
Picking your nose seems like a good enough reason.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Fingerprints might not have any use. There could be a multitude of reasons why people have them. People could find them sexy or fear anyone that doesn't have them. They could simple be a by product of another mutation that benefited humans. Evolution is a fun random thing without any real directional purpose. Some times yes mutations are beneficial other times not. People have a lot of trouble understanding that.
Aetheism is a religion.
Right, or you can just ask someone with no fingerprints, like my uncle who went through a certain kind of auto-immune chemo treatment which caused his fingerprints to peel away permanently over the course of several months.
He says his fingertips are no longer nearly as sensitive to heat and cold, and his ability to identify different sorts of rough surfaces has diminished severely; he can't tell the difference between rubber and suede for example without looking now.
I'm sure he'd be willing to have a phone call with an inquisitive scientist, should there be any out there who also have a well developed sense of the obvious.
"I believe there is no God" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
Other than that they serve no other purpose, like wasps.
Hey, if it weren't for WASPs, who would shop at The Gap or Banana Republic? Who would buy purse-sized dogs? And who would keep psychotherapists and badminton set manufacturers in business?
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Most atheists explain it as "I won't believe until I see proof of it", though, which is very much scientific.
Assuming they are correct ( its still just a theory ), as the human race continues to advance the need would be reduced and eventually eliminated, so ya, it should be 'evolved out' of the species.
What is the selection pressure? The places people live with better sanitation (reducing the need for an appendix), are the same ones where appendicitis is a treatable condition; so it's more or less a wash.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
More accurately, the rainbow was representative of the promise that God would never again destroy the whole earth with water. We get fire next time.
Although that seems like a good idea at first, if the treatment was powerful enough to remove his fingerprints, it could have caused some nerve damage as well, which could cause his diminished sensitivity. However, if he (and other such people) were to submit to tests and scans and general research, they would surely prove helpful in deciphering the mystery of the fingerprint.
Can you honestly not see how asserting a positive without evidence is different from asserting a negative based on lack of evidence?
Hint: in the former case, like in your Allah example, one is ascribing specific properties to something that is unobservable, impossible to test, impossible to prove. There is another word for this: fantasy.
There is no scientific evidence for unicorns, but I believe they're out there anyway because I want to/an old book told me to think that/it's convenient to my laziness of intellect.
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages
Yeah. Articulated armor, steel long-swords, and crop rotation aren't science at all....
And it sure wasn't religion that got all of the Greek city-states to stop fighting every four years and come together for the olympics. Nope. Not that, either.
You're arguing from authority, and "noted atheist says religion is bad" is no more credible than "pope says modernism is bad."
That's an interesting question, and now that you mention it, I'm one of those, whatever they are. "Atheism" does actually mean "without gods", NOT "anti-gods".
Atheism has its ROOTS in foreign words that roughly translate as "without gods." But it doesn't mean that any more than "Pagan" means "woodland religion."
Atheism: A religious creed that posits that there are neither God nor Gods, nor any supernatural entity.
Agnosticism: A religious creed that posits the existance or non-existance of the divine is beyond its members knowledge.
Pagan: Any religious creed that posits a belief in a God or Gods other than that described by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions.
Neo-Pagan: A reliigous creed that asserts belief in many gods, supposedly with its basis in pre-Christian Europe.
Aside from "Pagan", all three are relatively modern inventions, each younger as a viable religion than the United States of America.
Even without errors in copying the genetic code, people get unique finger prints. The overall pattern and general style will end up the same, but they're still unique, even between twins with identical DNA. Reminds me of the markings on the cloned cat. The clone was a calico, just like the original, but that seemly random pattern in a calico's fur? Turns out, it actually is somewhat random. Identical DNA doesn't produce identical fingerprints either...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages. As Christianity lost its grip in Europe science picked up again.
As if the plague had nothing to do with that. Or the breakdown of civility with the fall of the Roman Empire and rise of bands of knights in perpetual raids and gang wars for their lords.
Anyway, there was a lot of progress on science and math during the Middle Ages in the Muslim middle east, which was not exactly a bastion of atheism.
I've had the experience of having no fingerprints for a time. I worked at UPS unloading trucks; one of the customers shipped many thousands of small boxes just before the end of the year; the boxes were the precise size that the only way to grip them was with the pads of fingers and thumb (I'm looking at you, Daytimers!). A large portion of those boxes passed through my hands. Shortly after I started work there, I noticed that I was having trouble gripping items that were wet - a water glass with condensation on it would routinely slip through my fingers. When I examined my hands I saw that the ridges of my fingerprints were basically worn away. I wore gloves for a bit while working and the problem cleared itself up.
Another illustration would be to look at the skiving on the bottom of a pair of deck shoes. On a dry surface, they offer no advantage whatsoever, but on a wet surface the difference in grip is remarkable. Or for that matter tire treads - a set of slicks is the absolute best way to maximize grip - unless it's wet, at which point they become the WORST configuration.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Perhaps they helped attract mates?
Naturally ribbed, err... fingers, for her pleasure?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Since we were genetically engineered by an extraterrestrial civilization they designed fingerprints in our DNA so that they could catalog us for later use.
Depends who you vote for.
He's either in the White House, or he just left it. DrrrTISH.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Science requires a belief which there is no way to prove, which is that what you sense is reliable.
In your view, does a belief have to be provable to be rational?
In a less philosophical vein, faith in scientific approaches requires a belief that the universe is predictable ("If we do X a bunch of times, and get result Y, it's reasonable to expect that we'll see result Y the next time we do X.").
That's actually a large (and unprovable) assumption, as many philosophers will happily tell you. Of course, by definition, an assumption is unprovable. Call it a postulate or an axiom, if you prefer, but it's still the same thing - something you take for granted, and acknowledge you cannot prove.
In the end, scientific methods are anything but logically rigorous. The whole system of science is predicated on a method of argument that is considered fallacious in formal logical arguments.
Are scientific approaches useful? Definitely. Forming hypotheses based on what you see, then testing them is an extremely pragmatic tool for getting through life, and also for developing technology and building mental models of how things seem to work.
Don't mistake it for a logical tool, though. I guess it's fine to call it rational, if your definition of rational doesn't require logical rigor. Mostly, though, I think the word "reasonable" is used to describe something that seems intuitively correct based on observation, not "rational". Maybe it's just my social circle that uses it that way, though.
All human beings have a strong tendency to explain new observations in a way that it fits into their current worldview. We call it confirmation bias, and in some contexts, it can be a problem.
While confirmation bias is not logically rigorous in the least, it can actually be a pragmatic tool for going through life. I've never met anyone whose life philosophy was completely bulletproof - if you rethought things from first principles every time you learned information that conflicted with how you currently thought the world worked, you would starve to death pretty quickly. Thus do creationists keep their beliefs despite geological dating, and thus do atheists keep their beliefs despite soft tissue in dinosaur bones. For any worldview, there are observations about the universe that have troubling implications, I think. It's my personal belief that the human mind is just too small and simple a thing to fully know and understand the universe, and that no human will ever be able to do it, so I don't worry about having a perfect philosophy. I try to figure out what seems to make the most sense based on what I've experienced to date, and go with that, even if it's not perfect.
As far as Christians not investigating evolution - most people, regardless of their beliefs, refuse to examine other people's beliefs. It's a very common human trait - while I know very few creationists who've read Dawkins, I also know very few atheists who've actually read the Bible, and even fewer who've actually read any serious defenders of Christianity (C.S. Lewis is a decent place to start). It's pretty obvious to me that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, angry jerks, who don't want to actually understand anyone else's perspective (I see this tendency in myself on a daily basis, which is why I believe it).
As a theist who doesn't quite buy macroevolution, I've read chunks of Dawkins, and I don't find his arguments at all persuasive. Terry Eagleton wrote a scathing review of The God Delusion that summarizes the apparent gulf between Dawkins' arguments and what many theists believe pretty well. However, in case I've missed something, I'm planning to do a good careful read of some of Dawkins' books again this summer, to be certain I really do get what he's trying to say. I've had The God Delusion, The Blind Watchmaker, and The Ancestor's Tale recommended to me. Any other additi
"Oh, I like geeks way better than I like humans." - Mari Sarris
When you hold your hands together and pray, the fingerprints sign the prayer so God knows who it came from. That is why you hold your hands in front of your face in the usual pose. The prayer passes over both hands on it's way to God.