Ok, I'm going to go at Godel backwards. I'm going to start from the fact that the universe exists (whatever others may think to the contrary). I'm assuming that the universe is ruled by law. It also seems to me that the universe can't contain any self-contradictions, or it wouldn't exist in the first place. So, its laws are consistent. For a similar reason, they must be complete; if some key part was missing, the universe wouldn't exist. This line of reasoning seems to lead me to: the laws of the universe are both consistent and complete. I know that Godel was talking about formal systems, but it just seems to me that the laws of the universe are *the* formal system. So, there is at least one example of a formal system that is both consistent and complete, whether or not we can articulate it. Or have I completely missed Godel's idea here? Thanks, JT