This probably gets into more philosophy than science maybe, but there's not really a clear-cut line between "life" and "non-life" which is why it's hard to classify where viruses fall. If you instead think of life as less of a binary state and more like a process of self-preservation/self-propagation, then viruses certainly fit that bill. I would imagine the usage of the term "organism" predates thinking of life as a process and more of a state.
LTEDan t1_jbqhwx4 wrote
Reply to comment by Nymaz in I just learned that the known shortest DNA in an “organism” is about 1700 base pairs in a certain virus. Is there a minimum amount of “code” required for an organism (or virus) to function in any capacity? by mcbergstedt
This probably gets into more philosophy than science maybe, but there's not really a clear-cut line between "life" and "non-life" which is why it's hard to classify where viruses fall. If you instead think of life as less of a binary state and more like a process of self-preservation/self-propagation, then viruses certainly fit that bill. I would imagine the usage of the term "organism" predates thinking of life as a process and more of a state.