Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Consistency

A set of axioms is (simply) consistent if there is no statement such that both the statement and its negation are provable from the axioms, and inconsistent otherwise. That is to say, a consistent axiomatic system is one that is free from contradiction.

Peano arithmetic is provably consistent from ZFC, but not from within itself. Similarly, ZFC is not provably consistent from within itself, but ZFC + "there exists an inaccessible cardinal " proves ZFC is consistent because if κ is the least such cardinal, then V sitting inside the von Neumann universe is a model of ZFC, and a theory is consistent if and only if it has a model.

If one takes all statements in the language of Peano arithmetic as axioms, then this theory is complete, has a recursively enumerable set of axioms, and can describe addition and multiplication. However, it is not consistent.

Additional examples of inconsistent theories arise from the paradoxes that result when the axiom schema of unrestricted comprehension is assumed in set theory.
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