Soundness and Completeness

• Soundness

In mathematical logic, a logical system has the soundness property if and only if its inference rules prove only formulas that are valid with respect to its semantics. In most cases, this comes down to its rules having the property of preserving truth, but this is not the case in general. The word derives from the Germanic 'Sund' as in gesund, meaning health. Thus to say that an argument is sound means, following the etymology, to say that the argument is healthy.

• Completeness

In logic, semantic completeness is the converse of soundness for formal systems. A formal system is "semantically complete" when all tautologies are theorems whereas a formal system is "sound" when all theorems are tautologies. Kurt Gödel, Leon Henkin, and Emil Post all published proofs of completeness. (See History of the Church–Turing thesis.) A system is consistent if a proof never exists for both P and not P.