# Artificial Heredity > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Artificial Life / Inheritance **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Artificial heredity is the engineered transmission of organization among nonbiological descendants in a way that can preserve and vary lineage traits. ## Machine-Evolution Context Barricelli’s number strings, cellular-automaton loops and digital instruction genomes instantiate different artificial inheritance channels. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary A copied file is not automatically heredity; it becomes hereditary when embedded in a recurrent descendant-producing process. Artificial heredity does not imply artificial consciousness. ## Relationships [[wiki/Heritable Information|Heritable Information]], [[wiki/Digital Organism|Digital Organism]], [[wiki/Description Copier|Description Copier]], [[wiki/Substrate-Independent Evolution|Substrate-Independent Evolution]] ## Sources / Provenance - IAS Barricelli archive; von Neumann (1966); Avida literature.