The consistency of arithmetic (Q666895)

The paper is devoted to the problem of proving the consistency of the arithmetic of natural numbers (Peano arithmetic PA). It is an expanded version of the author's answer posed on MathOverflow in response to the question ``Is PA consistent? Do we know it?''. The author tells about the proof of the consistency of PA in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory ZFC and its consequences, Gödel's second incompleteness theorem, Gentzen's consistency proof and its implications, Friedman's relative consistency proof, the formalist perspective as well as finite approximations to consistency. It is a very interesting and well-written paper which explains mathematicians who are not specialists in mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics the sophisticated problems of consistency.