The phrase 'as a single thing' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use this phrase when referring to a single entity or unit that is separate from other elements or units. For example, "The house is seen as a single thing, and not as individual parts."
I think it's a little bit of a mistake to lump them as a single thing.
The second misconception I often hear is that purpose can be articulated as a single thing.
Treating information as a material requires approaching the user experience design of a device as a single thing, rather than one made of disjointed pieces.
Some philosophers have held that knowing cannot be described as a single thing, such as a state of consciousness.
But just as important was the steering of sounds to present the symphony as a single thing, developing in response to forces inherent within it.
Therefore, Vasubandhu sums up the Yogācāra objections against the reality of the external sense-objects (āyatanas) as: "An external sense-object is unreal because it cannot be the intentional object of cognition either as (1) a single thing or (2) as a multiple in [isolated] atoms; or (3) as a aggregate because the atom is not proven to exist" (Viṃ11, Sems tsam shi 3b).
'Animal' might even be applied to both, not as something definable by one formula, but as related to a single thing.
Sixty years ago, it hit some mysterious sweet spot, and since then it's been careful not to expand, meddle with the menu or, so far as possible, change a single thing.
The critic Randall Jarrell once defined a great novel as one that "does a single thing better than any other book has ever done it".
When medical researchers ask, "What is the link between anger and cancer?" as if there is a single thing called "anger" in the body, they are in the grip of this error.
