Innumerable millenia ago, a rather unimpressive species of ape began asking questions. That’s all, really; just questions. What is this? What is that? Why? This ape contemplated various answers to the questions, and, coming to what seemed to it a reasonable conclusion, applied the results to the world around it. Why is it that when one of my kind is bitten by a striped serpent, they nearly always die a few hours later? Perhaps the serpent killed them with something in its bite. The ape avoids the serpent; the ape lives; the ape breeds; and a whole new generation of apes live on to continue with this first tradition of science.
