The Concept of Conditional Temperature Dimension: Temperature as a Geometric Coordinate in Chiral Fragmentation

Is temperature a dimension of space? The question has no single answer, because “dimen-sion” has several meanings in chemistry. We separate four of them and argue that temperatureis never a dimension of physical space, always a coordinate of a reaction’s control space, andconditionally:(i) A coordinate of its state space when heat is not removed quickly, and(ii) An axis with a measurable length when a “ruler” exists, either a thermodynamic ruler (atequilibrium) or a kinetic ruler (Arrhenius rates).A catalyst changes the kinetic ruler but not the thermodynamic one. We state the conditions,explain why each matters, and illustrate them on chiral fragmentation, the division of a chiralsystem into two mirror-image populations, using the Soai reaction and a minimal toy model.The paper is conceptual and proposes testable predictions; it reports no new experimental data.