1. Questions on how we came into being have bothered us since the beginning.
2. Hence humanity's biggest puzzle: how chance shapes the sequence of events.
3. Charles Darwin pointed to the role played by natural selection in evolution.
4. Genetics Nobel Jacques Monod pointed to the role of mutations in evolution.
5. Darwin, Monod et al. were especially fascinated by the random nature of events.
6. Natural selection and mutations are just two among many other random happenings.
7. Like asteroids, which circle the sun between Mars and Jupiter, randomly slamming Earth.
8. One such random asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs and paved the way for small mammals.
9. Had it slammed anywhere but Mexico, where it did, Earth might have looked very different.
10. But it randomly hit Mexico, rich in sulphur and hydrocarbons, and made a kind of Earth.
11. One full of soot, sunlight-blocking aerosols, beauty, complexity, oddities and abundant life.
12. Biologist Sean Carroll observed that ours is an Earth of random mistakes, governed by chance.
13. He affirms that randomness isn't one among other possible hypotheses, it is the hypothesis.
14. To put it firmly, it is the sole hypothesis that squares with properly observed and tested facts.
15. So it's fair to live by Ricky Gervais' prickly but true maxim: we are not that special, just lucky.