Artificial Abiogenesis: Artificially Induced Lineage-Capable Continuity

Function in corpus

Extends the lineage arc to the question of artificial initiation — closing a gap that the prior papers left open. Establishes that the artificial/natural distinction is structurally irrelevant to lineage, and that the lineage-indexed constraint transfer criterion applies identically regardless of how a system's organization was first induced.

Details

Connected papers: Lineage Before Selection; Abiogenesis and the Origin of Lineage; Constraint Carriers Before Codes; Reduced and Parasitic Lineages Can artificial intervention originate lineage — or does it only ever produce artifacts that must be reconstructed from scratch each time? This paper answers with structural precision: artificial origin does not disqualify lineage, but repeated external authorship does.\n\nThe criterion it applies is the one established in Paper 61: what distinguishes genuine lineage from mere recurrence is lineage-indexed constraint transfer. If externally induced organization becomes a historically transmissible persistence package — one whose specific transferred content remains load-bearing in descendant reachability — then artificial intervention has initiated lineage. If instead similar organization must be externally re-authored each cycle under similar conditions, then only recurring artifacts are being produced, not lineage.\n\nThe paper identifies three structural cases. Fabricated artifacts and recurrent artificial production are excluded: the organization is re-imposed from outside each time, not transmitted through successors. Assisted proto-lineages occupy a genuine boundary region: externally scaffolded systems that are approaching but have not yet crossed the threshold of self-transmitting continuity. Artificially induced lineage-capable continuity is affirmed as structurally possible: the artificial origin of the initiating conditions is irrelevant once the resulting organization begins transmitting its own persistence package across bifurcations.\n\nThe paper explicitly excludes design rhetoric and code-first descriptions of heredity. Whether a human intended the system, whether it was "programmed," and whether it resembles human technology are all irrelevant to the structural question. The only question is whether the specific transferred organizational content remains causally load-bearing in descendants — or whether the next generation's organization is effectively re-authored from outside.

Availability

This paper is listed for orientation and dependency tracking. No public PDF or Zenodo record is linked yet.