COMPOSITES (Loops / Whorls): Central Pockets, Lateral Pockets, Twin Loops & Accidentals

Hi Martijn, you are missing my sense of humour! I think you should have noticed my comment at the end about not mixing the empirical with the intuitive, which is exactly what my first sentence was doing !!!

Of course there are different distributions of fingerprints around the world and, according to your interesting article you linked in, only in England and left handed Americans would you find so many loops.

BUT........

Your article reminds me, again, of how annoying scientific/forensic dermatoglyphicists are! How dare they delineate the defining characteristic of a fingerprint to be the triradius and then mix up Arches (0 triradius, by definition) with Tented Arches (1 triradius, by definition). This is just so slack..... If they wanted to mix the tented arches in anywhere, they should have put them in with loops, of course.

NOTICE: In the table below are 'plain arches' and 'tented arches' grouped as ARCHES; and 'double loop whorls', 'plain whorls', 'central pocket loop whorls' and 'accidental whorls' are grouped as WHORLS.

But it gets worse, of course. Not only are the Arch statistics inaccurate to around 1%, the whorl statistics are going to be very inaccurate too. If double loops are around 4%, central pockets around 3% and other accidentals around 1%, that is an 8% variation in accuracy ! They even specifically define a double loop as being "two loops" and not a whorl at all !!

To my mind, it is completely idiotic of them to define 8 types of fingerprint pattern and then totally ignore 4 of them and mix them in with others..... Just dumb.

Granted that there are significant differences in the distributions of dermatoglyphics in different populations around the world, you have to ask yourself: on what basis can you claim you have any understanding of the distibution of fingerprints in a country like Argentina when you have only looked at 60 pairs of hands ??? As we know, many Argentians are descended from Spanish Europeans, and you are going to get a very different distribution if you looked at indigenous tribal Argentinians as opposed to Spanish Europeans. Same for New Guinea - those 166 people could have been some kind of remote forest dwelling tribe, but that is not going to be representative of the entire population of New Guinea. These samples are just not big enough to draw any significant conclusions from.

So, as always with scientific/forensic dermatoglyhics, some interesting things and some downright rubbish. Takes a bit of work to sort through it though.....

In Palmar and Plantar Dermatoglyphics in Primates, Cummins and Midlo 1942, explain how the 0, 1, 2 categories are related to pattern intensity. This is why tented arches with 1 triradius is still with arches with 0. Below is their system for giving a value to intensity. Notice how the loop and tented arch are of a higher value than the patterns we would call double loops. Deg. stands for degenerative. They explain the patterns can be seen as evolving or degenerating in either direction. Arch evolves to whorl or whorl degerates to an arch.

Intensity chart for primates (human's excluded):


"An earlier consideration of "pattern intensity" in connection with finger prints (Cummins & Goldstein '32; Cummins & Steggerda, '35) suggests a similar analysis in the present study. the pattern intensity of these authors (like the comparable "Deltie" of Kirchmair and Poll, '36) is a measure of the degrees of pattern elaboration; arches, loops and whorls are assigned values (0, 1 and 2 respectively) which represent roughly though it may be, the scale of increasing configurational complexity."

The chart is for palms and not fingerprints but they say

"Summated for the individual, or for right and left hands or for single digits, these values are useful for comparison of what is believed to be a fundamentally important trait of the dermatoglyphics. Though the present numerical evaluations of configuration types differ from those cited in the studies of human finger prints, the principle here adopted is the same, being directed toward rating the degrees of configurational complexity."

They continue to argue that no "weights" should be given to the different configuration types pointing out there isn't enough known.

The first chapter of Application and Methodological Perspectives in Dermatoglyphics Bali & Chaube (1994) is an article by Mondal & Kumbnani that includes various tables and charts presenting how different reseachers have categorized the fingerprints in the past.

Here's one example:



I have noticed that just as Martijn reminded us about what we discovered in earlier discussions, various researchers are not consistent in their vocabulary. What one calls a twin loop, another calls a lateral loop and so forth.

To quote from the above mentioned article on page 11: "In Topological principle, Loesch (1975) adopted the term "tented loop" for tented arch and "double loop" (whose cores point in the opposite direction) which is traditionally know as twin loop. Similarly, the term "twin loop" (two loops) was used whose cores point in the same direction or in the same side of the finger but traditionally it is called as a lateral pocket."

Looking through some of my prints, I have found what I would call a true twin loop (a full loop from radial and a full loop from ulnar sides) on two prints out of about 200 pairs of hands. I did this a few days ago and didn't keep track of the other types of double loop/composite patterns although I did study each of them. I was on a mission to find a twin loop!

Interestingly both hands (different people) that these were found on had another interesting feature, their Main Line A ended near the wrist. The traced ridge flowed along the outside of the thenar mount until near the wrist and then went horizontally to the lower hypothenar. On one of these Main Line B ended in an area where A usually is found to end.

This is what I would call a true Twin Loop pattern:

Ulnar and Radial Lateral Pocket Loops

The above is from Jennifer Hirsch's God Given Glyphs. The finger on the right is the left index finger.

I wrote her and asked permission to copy the prints here and asked her to share her thoughts:

hello again dear Patti and thanks for your patience what an intriguing question/comment you pose, honestly I have never observed or known of a distinction between and ulnar or radial origination of a double loop, really fascinating. I have learned something completely new and henceforth will be keeping my eyes peeled! It's so fascinating how new dimensions keep revealing in chirology and in all spheres of life really. Is this awareness uniquely yours or did you learn about this distinction about dl's from other hand analysts? Yes I see that in the top image on pg 180 of my friend Chris's left hand the water (index) finger has a radial origin dl and the dl on his earth (middle) finger is ulnar origin. I can't offer much besides that as with radial loops Chris was subjected to massive criticism from both his parents when growing up. He is truly a Sensitive. You are very welcome to use the images and thank you for your offer to reference me and GGG. Kindest regards and love to you.
..

Hello Patti

Great job, great research work. Congrats.

Thanks
Anand

Hi Patti,

thanks for the detailed postings.

Yet more lunacy from the so-called scientific dermatoglyphicists. How can they possibly classify fingerprints using such pejorative language as 'degenerative' and call themselves scientific ??!! Equally, where is the science that demonstrates irrefutably that fingerprints 'evolve' or 'degenerate'?????? This is a totally idiotic idea that some scientist made up as a theory for 'explaining' differences in fingerprint patterns that subsequent generations of scientists latched onto in an unthinking and uncritical manner. If it isn't complete nonsense, then it is at best completely unscientific. To my mind it is both.

Yes, I know where the idea came from, the totally spurious theory of volar pad development and the bigger they are the more whorls you have. Cobblers...

If we are taking 'degeneration/evolution' in scientific terms, then of course whorls are the more degenerate dermatoglyphic as these are found far more frequently on the highly developed pads of the paws of chimpanzees and other apes. But, of course, that would only be viewed as being significant if you had a belief in that other equally unproven and unprovable scientific assertion, the theory of evolution.

With all that in mind, we have to take everything Cummins and Midlo say from here on in with a great big bag of salt. What the heck is 'pattern intensity'????? And how were these 'intensity values' arrived at? Decided upon by whom? With what criteria? And, even then, how the hell do you measure 'intensity'????? That is an extraordinarily subjective concept !!!! And, therefore, a highly unscientific one. What a load of rubbish!

Patti- you are wrong in what you say here about "This is why tented arches with 1 triradius is still with arches with 0." - in the diagram you have presented, Arches are not even mentioned!! According to this schemata, arches don't even exist as a pattern ! So how/why do say this justifies them putting tented arches together with arches????

Actually, according to this 'pattern intensity' argument, what we have here is a confirmation that tented arches should be classified with loops - they have the same 'intensity quotient'.

This is just pseudo-science. Its rubbish.

Hi Patti,

Those fingerprints you got from Jenni's book are not Lateral Pocket loops; they are not lateral, ie coming in from the sides.

These are just double loops, plain and simple.

Hi Christopher,
I see you haven't lost your passion about this subject.

I appreciate very much the work done by researchers in the past and particularly work by Harold Cummins.

Purkinje related the patterns to the sense of touch. He was aware of the nervous system connection long before there was scientific evidence.
As you know most of the later researchers related them to timing of developmental aspects of the human body which could be narrowed down into categories relating to frequency of configurations found in particular syndromes and birth defects.
Forensics is mainly interested in getting an accurate identification between a latent fingerprint and its owner.

Most definitely Purkinje and very likely Cummins, in my opinion from reading their work, would have been willing to pursue the psychological aspects of dermatoglyphics.

Cummins & Midlo explain that the idea of evolving and degenerating is a poor way of labeling them as they are formed complete... not in a state of evolving from arch to whorl or back and become frozen in development at some stage in the process. But, it was the best they could do to illustrate the obvious progression from one type of print to another. In that sense it is a very good working model!

After spending considerable time last summer reading Wilder, Wentworth, Cummins & Midlo, Purkinje, Kidd and others I realized that then just as now, research work is tainted by politics and personal agendas of the time. (compare to 'global warming' research now)

Eugenics played a huge role in placing the whorls at the bottom of the evolutionary pack of humanity. Even Cummins argued this was ridiculous because those with the whorls in the primate kingdom were more evolved than those with plain fields. So it'd be silly to think that animals became more evolved in accordance to the complexity of patterns but humans start out at the bottom with the most complex patterns and evolve to fewer. In reality that is comparing apples to oranges. They too were trying to place some kind of IQ measurement to the fingerprints. Purkinje and Kidd were on the right path. Touch is a huge Sense and it goes beyond surface to surface awareness.

Because I find working with the sense of touch, vs. the elevated walking pad, school of thought as being closer to fitting in with a person's psychology, I find it important to trace the patterns and take a close look at the pattern's structure.

Regarding tented arches not being counted with loops... there are no returning ridges. There are only two fields in the tented arch and in a loop we have three fields meeting at the triradius. We found that the rules for determining loops eliminated many patterns that had what 'appeared' to be a single recurving ridge. Recurves less than 90 degrees in a single 'loop' were disqualified and categorized as tented arches. Our eyes see a loop but in reality it is two rods that have leaned into one another in a confined space.



EDIT:

For example regarding politics of the time. Why ever in 1926 would someone write an article entitled "Dermatoglyphics in Jews"! Who would fund such a research! Here the first page can be read - note at the bottom how you can see that Cummins & Midlo are pulling away from giving any value to racial differences.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.1330100109/abstract

Christopher Jones wrote:
Yes, I know where the idea came from, the totally spurious theory of volar pad development and the bigger they are the more whorls you have. Cobblers...

A year or so ago Martijn found a web site that had animated displays showing computer generated fingerprint development based on mathematical calculations. They felt they had proven something by showing the most elevated surface tension created whorls. Yet in the end, if I recall correctly, they could not create a double loop pattern using this procedure!

Patti wrote:A year or so ago Martijn found a web site that had animated displays showing computer generated fingerprint development based on mathematical calculations. They felt they had proven something by showing the most elevated surface tension created whorls. Yet in the end, if I recall correctly, they could not create a double loop pattern using this procedure!

Well, there you go, my point exactly!

Scientists so very often start with a theory and then try and explain (or fit) all the facts according to that theory - which is just not being very scientific. As you rightly point out, the study of fingerprints came out of the study of Eugenics - which was a highly respecatable science in the late C19th. Francis Galton, being a cousin of Darwin, was merely applying the Theory of Evolution to human beings and, in fingerprints, he thought had had found the perfect measure. Galton established the Galton Laboratory for Eugenics (a term he himself coined in 1883), at the University of London in 1895, a post that was later held by LS Penrose.

Once you have the weight of that theoretical nonsense behind fingerprints, what scientist is not going to bend to it and not assess fingerprints in terms of 'evolution' and 'degeneration'. Any scientific dermatoglyphicist who even mentions these terms in an uncritical manner needs to be looked at very suspiciously. If they can't see past that, then there is a blinkering on in theri mind which will prevent them from seeing all sorts of other things.

Just because they are scientists does not mean we should take them seriously !

zaobhand wrote:Speaking of global warming and politics, check this one out:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html#ixzz1kujcE4l3

Yes exactly!! And they didn't even mention their progress relating to another article a couple of years ago: "Nobel prize winner Paul Crutzen has recently advocated injecting artificially large quantities of sulphur dioxide into Earth's atmosphere at around 20 km to counteract the global warming resulting from increased greenhouse gases." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130122035.htm

(sorry - brief off topic break - )

Hello Patti

Can you please explain this sense of touch and raised pads. Lot of times in fingertips you would see a slight bulge at the fingertip, is that raised pads or somethingh do with touch. Also the core of the print forms at lower side, higher side, medium is that somethingh to go to do for touch.

I was reading wolfe book but she mentions somethingh in her study but could not understand it. She mention somebody by name carus who did some study on it.

Regarding double loop working model wherein they could not fit in category of whorls, does that imply double loop does not fit in certain criteria which they have used to fill up for whorl, what about other whorl patterns.


Thanks
Anand