Informatics and its role for the study of genesis and properties of complex natural systems

The paper considers the history of cognition of information as a phenomenon and informatics as its quantitative and qualitative development. The logical connection between such notions as information, informatics, complexity, and complex natural self-organizing systems is investigated. It is considered that information, besides its usual traditional meaning, is one of the main properties of matter. Informatics is considered as an instrument for cognition of development and structure of complex natural systems. Petroleum is chosen as an example of such system. It is proved that petroleum, as well as each its hydrocarbon molecule, possesses corpuscular properties, and petroleum as a whole has information volume calculated in bits. A new approach is proposed for petroleum accumulations exploration. It is based on the fact that petroleum generation is a discrete process. Consequently, the process of discovering petroleum accumulations has two stages. The first stage is characterized by static uncertainty and the second stage is characterized by dynamic uncertainty. Both types of uncertainty need to be removed. The paper presents technologies and methods of solving these problems.