> s/first/first smart enough to invent science/.
To claim something as first, there must be others in reality to have followed it. If there is no second, there would be no first. Is there a second intelligence to have invented science, or we are the only ones?
Intelligence as an optimization process works orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution. We've dominated the optimization happening on this planet. If we were to stop doing technology and wait a million years, then maybe we'd see a second species develop comparable intelligence.
We've seen no other creatures on Earth being able to grow beyond using basic tools.
But this also somewhat implies (which is GP's point) that we're close to the dumbest possible mind that evolution could make that could still develop science. Or think of it as a crude MVP that ended up being a production system.