Talk:Geodesic

"In Euclidean geometry, the geodesic are the straight line, but in more general spaces they need not be" -- not sure about this. A geodesic is what we mean by a "straight line" -- what else can a straight line be if not a geodesic? The fact that great circles don't appear straight is just a nasty side-effect of the Mercator projection mindset. -- Tarquin 14:54 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

Yes, I agree; I reformulated a bit. Also, geodesics by definition really only give locally the shortest paths, not necessarily globally. AxelBoldt 19:26 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

It's been a (somewhat) long time since I studied that, but aren't geodesics straight with respect to the local curvature in some sense ? That should be added to the article. --FvdP