Let's first ask, what is life? And immediately we are stumped.

The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures.

Apparently, myths become truths if upheld long enough.

Let's first ask, what is life? And immediately we are stumped.

Science is agnostic when it comes to god; not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly; just agnostic.

At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe.

Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system were not exceptions.