[roxolotl]

The assumption made by many in the early 20th century, spurred on by the recent successes of unification and formalization, was essentially that we could formally describe the entire universe. Godel’s proof shows that if you attempt to formally describe something there’s either an inconsistency or it’s incomplete. That doesn’t mean you cannot describe the behavior of a dog formally but it does mean the same formula which encodes the behavior will either be inconsistent or incomplete. It might only be inconsistent or incomplete when applied outside of defining the behavior of a dog though. That’s why the little preamble about unification exists in this post but it’s not very well tied into the rest of the post.

[bazoom42]

> Godel’s proof shows that if you attempt to formally describe something there’s either an inconsistency or it’s incomplete.

The “something” Gödels proof talks about is axiomatic systems. It doesn’t talk about physical objects.