Abstract. Standard defences of ontological individualism are challenged by arguments that exploit the dependence of social facts on material facts – i.e. facts that are not about human individuals. In this paper I discuss Brian Epstein’s “materialism” in The Ant Trap: granting Epstein’s strict definition of individualism, I show that his arguments depend crucially on a generous conception of social properties and social facts. Individualists however are only committed to the claim that projectible properties are individualistically realized, and materialists have not undermined this claim.