Marcel Berger states _Thom's Principle_ as:

> "rich structures are more numerous in low dimension,
and poor structures are more numerous in high dimension."

This is in
_Geometry II_
(Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1987.
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=iER421ZjkqcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s">
Google books</a>), pp.39-40, after a discussion of regular polytopes
shows that there are only three convex regular polytopes in dimensions
larger than 4, but six in dimension 4, five in dimension 3, and
an infinite number in dimension 2.
He then lists further examples of the principle:
e.g., simple Lie groups illustrate rich structure in low dimensions,
and topological vector spaces illustrate poor structure in
high dimension (all homeomorphic in finite dimensions).

In so far as Thom's principle is true&mdash;or at least holds widely&mdash;my question is: 

> _Why_ should low dimensions exhibit richer structure
than high dimensions? Is there any generic reason to expect this?

It might also be interesting to track down Thom's own formulation
of his principle, to understand the context in which he proposed it.