> Altruism (a word coined by Comte in the 19th century) is as
> individualist a term as aggressiveness. They both presume that only
> individuals exist, and that society is just a mechanical adding up of
> individuals. Altruism and greed are both pretty useless concepts for
> either social or biological analysis.
>
You might want to explain your last sentence (with specific reference to
biology only) in more detail (we'll exclude human social situations on
the grounds that they are too complex and in any case too loaded for
discussion).
Altruism and selfishness are technical terms in biology that refer to behaviour by an organism which impacts its individual genetic fitness and that of other organims e.g. consider a definition of altruism occurring in Wilson's _Sociobiology_ , "the surrender of personal genetic fitness for the enhancement of personal genetic fitness in others" (unfortunate that he wrote 'personal', seeing as like most of the rest of the book the chapter in which this occurs is confined to animals).
The point being simply this - you say the terms are 'useless' , but they are extensively used in the literature (e.g. a whole chapter titled Group Selection and Altruism in the text above) and indeed seem pivotal concepts. Useless, then, in what way?
I also have trouble with your apparently pejorative labelling of the terms as ' individualist'. I don't follow this as a criticism - natural selection takes place at both group _and individual_ levels, indeed selection at the individual level plays a vital role.
While I'd be prepared to agree that individualist approaches in many other fields (especially those that usually occupy this list) are worse than useless, I don't see how this applies to biology. Surely in some fields an individualist approach is just what is required.
Please enlighten.