Hmm, I'm confused now about what you are trying to assert. You are, if I'm now parsing you correctly, asserting that a species with no tool appendage but with some version of the scientific method could reach a high tech level without tool use? If so, that doesn't seem unreasonable, but you seem to be conflating intelligence with having a scientific community. These are not at all the same thing.
In the situation where you have smart folks with no ability to build tools, scientific community is one useful technology they can still build, and that can dramatically improve their capability to solve the no-hands problem. For example, I wouldn't expect humans with no hands (and with hoofs, say) to develop technology if they don't get good enough at science first (and this might fail to happen at our level of rationality in the absence of technology, which would be the case in no-hands hypothetical). As an alternative, I listed sufficiently-greater indi...
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