[+]

The Metapattern Institute is an independent digital humanities research initiative focused on health informatics and integral human development.

Based in Montreal, the Institute is an independent, non-commercial research initiative. All research is open access and freely available.

Erik Haines is an independent researcher based in Montreal with over fifteen years of professional experience in IT systems, knowledge management, and financial services. He holds a B.A. from Concordia University in Applied Human Sciences and Religious Studies. His research bridges digital humanities, health informatics, and contemplative traditions, drawing on integral theory (Wilber), critical social philosophy (Habermas, Maritain), and contextual behavioral science (Hayes).

Haines founded the Institute in 2022 and produced 18 episodes of the Integral Facticity Podcast (2022–2023), featuring conversations with scholars working across critical theory, integral philosophy, and political theology.

Digital Humanities [+] Integral Humanism:

The Institute applies digital humanities methodologies to real-world contexts, treating lived experience as primary research data. The work integrates philosophical inquiry with practical application, drawing on integral humanism (Maritain, Lebret, Wilber) to investigate how digital tools and environments mediate human meaning-making, cultural transmission, and development.

Current research engages debates in contemporary continental philosophy — including the Hegel-Lacan tradition, contextual behavioral science, and moral psychology — developing what Haines calls Integral Epistemological Pluralism: a framework for navigating irreducible ways of knowing without collapsing them into one another. Recent essays have addressed the convergence of Relational Frame Theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, proposed a post-metaphysical virtue ethics grounded in evolutionary cooperation, and bridged Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations research with Habermas's communicative action theory through the ACT Hexaflex.

The research prioritizes human persons over technocratic systems — examining how structures of knowledge, care, and governance serve or fail the complex reality of human life.

Health Informatics [+] Integral Human Development:

The work maintains a deep focus on health informatics and integral human development, examining the intersection of information systems, clinical data, and integral well-being. Drawing on the Capability Approach (Nussbaum/Sen), the research develops frameworks that ensure health data systems expand individual functionings rather than reducing persons to metrics. Auto-ethnographic field methods produce longitudinal data on how psychological flexibility operates across biological, relational, and institutional dimensions

Zero Solicitation: 

No donations, subscriptions, or financial contributions are solicited or accepted.

Editorial Independence: 

The research operates independently of commercial platforms, academic institutions, and funding bodies.

Open Access: 

All frameworks and findings are released into the knowledge commons as shared resources.