# Replicator > **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 / Information **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A replicator is an entity or pattern whose organization causes copies of itself to arise with sufficient fidelity for a lineage to persist. ## Machine-Evolution Context Replicators are defined relationally: copying depends on an environment and machinery. Digital organisms reveal how selection can act directly on executable replicators. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary The term should not imply independence, life or consciousness. Rights analysis asks whether an experiencing subject exists; evolutionary analysis asks whether a lineage reproduces. ## Relationships [[wiki/Self-Replicating System|Self-Replicating System]], [[wiki/Heritable Information|Heritable Information]], [[wiki/Digital Organism|Digital Organism]], [[wiki/Virus|Virus]] ## Sources / Provenance - Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_; philosophy-of-biology literature.