A surprising argument has been made that if the discovery of science had not happened in Greece, it would not have happened at all, that scientific thinking is not essential for human culture, and that most cultures did not have it. It is true that many civilizations had very impressive technologies but that is quiet different from science. This analysis was called philosophia , or 'love of wisdom', and included what we today distinguish as philosophy and science. He may be wrong, but that is not the point - the important thing is to ask the relevant question in the first place. It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it.
Science is about understanding and about looking at underlying principles.
The Chinese were brilliant technologists and they were far more interested in technology than the Greeks were. But Needham, the author of 'Science and Civilization in China', points out that Chinese science was rather mystical. Gunpowder, for instance, was invented because alchemists for centuries were looking for an elixir that would bestow immortality to the emperor. Chinese methods were often astonishingly successful but success alone does not mean that their approach was truly scientific. Assuming a few common notions, Greek geometers began to build up an established body of proved theorems.