The distinction between environment and organism here seems a little arbitrary. The organism’s cells have membranes, but they’re permeable and the organism can’t do its job without an interaction between itself and the environment. Even with the energy stored inside, it requires warmth and atmospheric pressure. I suspect there are any number of counter examples of life forms that challenge the simplicity of this formulation. You could just as easily argue that each cell is a life form unto itself, right?
Isn’t each cell a life form unto itself? Like there are cell lines from cancer cells that has been living outside their ‘host’ long after the human they were aquired from died (HeLa)
They just specialize in an specific environment created and maintained by cells with the same genetic material
