# Inheritance > **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:** Evolution / Continuity **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Inheritance is the causal transmission of traits, structures or information from one generation or implementation to another. ## Machine-Evolution Context Inheritance can be genetic, cultural or computational. The article focuses on cases where machine instructions or cellular states enter descendants and affect their future operation. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary Inheritance is not identity. A recipient may be causally descended from a source without continuing the source’s first-person existence. ## Relationships [[wiki/Heredity|Heredity]], [[wiki/Information Inheritance|Information Inheritance]], [[wiki/Cultural Evolution|Cultural Evolution]], [[wiki/Continuity Evidence vs Continuity|Continuity Evidence vs Continuity]] ## Sources / Provenance - Evolutionary theory; continuity-corpus synthesis.