I've though about this a lot lately. Humans are unique in that we have narrative (imagine that in italics). Science is one of our narratives, along with religion, mythology, and I guess other "magisteria" as Steven J. Gould called them. In any case narratives are stories, and our stories make us human.
The thing about science is that it results in demonstrable results in the physical world, so we figure there is something going on there that makes it different.