# Cellular Automata > **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:** Computation / Artificial Life **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Cellular automata are discrete dynamical systems in which a grid of cells updates from local neighborhood rules. ## Machine-Evolution Context They provided the formal medium for von Neumann’s universal constructor, Langton’s loops, Codd’s design and Evoloops. They make global organization traceable to explicit local transitions. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary A cellular automaton can compute, replicate, evolve, do several of these, or do none. The properties must be demonstrated separately. ## Relationships [[wiki/John von Neumann|John von Neumann]], [[wiki/Universal Constructor|Universal Constructor]], [[wiki/Self-Replicating Loop|Self-Replicating Loop]], [[wiki/Evoloop|Evoloop]] ## Sources / Provenance - von Neumann and Burks, _Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata_; Sayama and Nehaniv (2025).