The consistency of arithmetic

DOI10.1007/S00283-018-9837-ZMaRDI QIDQ666895zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Timothy Y. Chow

Publication date 12 March 2019

Published in The Mathematical Intelligencer (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.05641

zbMATH Keywords

Peano arithmetic, consistency proofs, Gödel's theorem

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Relative consistency and interpretations (03F25) First-order arithmetic and fragments (03F30)

Abstract: In 2010, Vladimir Voevodsky gave a lecture on "What If Current Foundations of Mathematics Are Inconsistent?" Among other things he said that he was seriously suspicious that an inconsistency in PA (first-order Peano arithmetic) might someday be found. About a year later, Edward Nelson announced that he had discovered an inconsistency not just in PA, but in a small fragment of primitive recursive arithmetic. Soon, Daniel Tausk and Terence Tao independently found a fatal error, and Nelson withdrew his claim, stating that consistency of PA was an "open problem." Many mathematicians may find such claims bewildering. Is the consistency of PA really an open problem? If so, would the discovery of an inconsistency in PA cause all of mathematics to come crashing down like a house of cards? This expository article attempts to address these questions, by sketching and discussing existing proofs of the consistency of PA (including Gentzen's proof and Friedman's relative consistency proof that appeals to the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem). Since Nelson was a self-avowed formalist, the article also examines the implications of formalism.

Review text

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.

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Cited in

(10)

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4099294 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 177636 (Why is no real title available?)
• On deciding the truth of certain statements involving the notion of consistency
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• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1163361 (Why is no real title available?)
• Number theory and elementary arithmetic†
• The consistency of arithmetic
• On the notion of \textit{Proving its own consistency}
• Do the integers exist? The unknowability of arithmetic consistency
• Finitary consistency of a free arithmetic

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