Editing Codimension (section)

==In geometric topology==
Codimension also has some clear meaning in [[geometric topology]]: on a manifold, codimension 1 is the dimension of topological disconnection by a submanifold, while codimension 2 is the dimension of [[Ramification (mathematics)|ramification]] and [[knot theory]]. In fact, the theory of high-dimensional manifolds, which starts in dimension 5 and above, can alternatively be said to start in codimension 3, because higher codimensions avoid the phenomenon of knots. Since [[surgery theory]] requires working up to the middle dimension, once one is in dimension 5, the middle dimension has codimension greater than 2, and hence one avoids knots.

This quip is not vacuous: the study of [[embedding]]s in codimension 2 is knot theory, and difficult, while the study of embeddings in codimension 3 or more is amenable to the tools of high-dimensional geometric topology, and hence considerably easier.