Let us try to put a well-sharpened pencil in an upright position on a smooth surface. Because of the physical equilibrium law, it will certainly fall, but in which direction? It depends on many chance events, such as motions of the air, the tension of muscles in my finger, acoustic waves from a passing lorry, and so on. Many of these events could be the results of strictly causal processes; they are random only from the point of view of our pencil making a hopeless effort to sustain its upright position. Without these chance events, the laws of physics could not act, and the pencil would not know how to fall down. 

This is a generic situation. In the network of physical laws there are many "free places" in which chance events could act and there are as many of them as is necessary for the entire system to work. Chance does not contradict the laws of physics but co-operates with them. Moreover, we know today that the laws of physics that are active in the processes leading to the growth of complexity and the generation of structure, including living systems, must be especially sensitive to input from random events.

Our most distant roots go back to the epoch, deep in the cosmic past, in which the first nuclei of chemical elements were born. This could not have happened before the universe was about one minute old. Before that moment temperatures were too high to allow protons and neutrons to hold together to form stable nuclei. Before the universe was three minutes old, its "chemical composition" was established: 25 per cent of the total mass was helium, less then 1 per cent other light elements, and all the rest hydrogen. Here we are referring to the synthesis of nuclei of chemical elements. Nuclei were able to capture electrons and become atoms only when the temperature dropped to 4,000 Kelvins. This happened 400,000 years after the Big Bang. At the same time, the era ended when the universe was dominated by hot electromagnetic radiation, and the processes leading to the origin of stars and galaxies accelerated. 

Heavier elements are synthesised in the interiors of massive stars and carbon is an element which is crucial for the origin of life. Stars evolve and explode and, from the ashes of dying stars, new stars are born. Three or four generations of stars are needed to produce carbon out of lighter nuclei. Around one such star our planetary system was formed and one of the planets of this system is now our home. The protons and neutrons of which our body is composed were once the building-blocks of stars. We really are children of the cosmos. 

If in our attempt to balance a well-sharpened pencil so many chance events feature, what can we say about all the processes which have led to our existence? Without the laws of physics there would be no chance events; without chance events the laws of physics could not operate. Grand design contains both laws and chance.

We should stop thinking about such processes in terms of Aristotelian chance which destroys causality and order; they are fully mathematised factors participating in the creative dynamics of the universe. 

Is the watchmaker blind? Perhaps he does not need eyes, since he has mathematics at his fingertips.