Every unity can be treated either as an unanalyzable whole endowed with constitutive properties which define it as a unity or else as a complex system that is realized as a unity through its components and their mutual relations. If the latter is the case, a complex system is defined as a unity by the relations between its components which realize the system as a whole and its properties as a unity are determined by the way this unity is defined, and not by particular properties of its components. It is these relations which define a complex system as a unity and constitute its organization. (A 187-88)

The properties of the components of an autopoietic system do not determine its properties as a unity. The properties of an autopoietic system (as is the case for every system) are determined by the constitution of this unity, and are, in fact, the properties of the network created by, and creating, its components. Therefore, to ascribe a determinant value to any component, or to any of its properties, because they seem to b "essential", is a semantic srtifice. In other words, all the components, and the components' properties, as well as the circumstances which permit their productive interactions, are necessary when they paticipate in the realization of an autopoietic network, and none is determinant of the constitution of the network or of its propeties as a unity. (A 192)