The sea grass is comprised of individual plants that are each of identical DNA, ie they are clones. Does this and their proximity and continuity make them one organism?
In the latter case I personally wouldn’t call it one organism. Otherwise you clone a sheep and get a “double sheep” when they share a pen?!
As a side note, I'm going to see Pando this weekend.
think systems theory of life, planet, rock, gas, organism, etc.
In a sense we aren’t distinct from the external world because there is no internal world to differentiate from. It’s imaginary - it exists only in our neurons, an abstraction to help us navigate reality, just impulses firing along various pathways in a brain.
They are still clearly seperate organisms, as a human does not require a particular bacterial cell, only that at least one is present in its proper place (the same as all the other cells in the human body). Thus, the "human organism" is an emergent organism from many cells, bacterial or not, acting and interacting non-deterministically. The bacterial cell by its existence allows for the existence of the larger organism.
A baby relies on adults to survive as well, but it is not biologically claimed that they are the same organism as the adults they rely on for survival.
We all require consumption of living and dead cells to survive as well. We do not claim organic-unification with these other organisms.
(now my brain is playing that song from the chiquita banana ad on loop that was based on Carmen Miranda in The Gang's All Here, as if that movie hadn't already saturated the worldwide demand for banana advertisement for decades)
See also https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/3952-the-reason...
Probably. The top paragraphs in [1] talk about precisely that.