I'd say it's not inevitable honestly. It'd be the height of hubris to consider human intelligence to be some epitome of evolution after all. Now intelligence is useful for survival to be sure, and societies are also generally great for survival as well. But an intelligent society that builds technology and explores the universe the way we do? It might not happen that often. I mean to the best of our knowledge we're the only life to ever go that route barring a few now extinct evolutionary cousins and siblings. And we haven't even been here that long. Maybe a hundred thousand years out of hundreds of millions of years that were sure life previously existed on earth. There's also the fact that supporting the sort of intelligence we possess is a massive energy sink. It takes all kinds of food, time to develop (there are reasons we're utterly useless when we're born and for years after but most other animals aren't). I could imagine places where there just might not be enough raw materials and energy input into an ecosystem to support that kind of evolution.

So out of hundreds of millions of years on a planet replete with life and energy from both the sun and the earth itself, we're the only ones who became this intelligent and it comes with a lot of vulnerabilities that every other species that we know has come close never overcame and they became extinct. I'd honestly have to guess that when it comes to survival, we got lucky and made it through all the awkward phases where the downsides of our intelligence could have easily outweighed the benefits and we easily could have died out.

Now given the sheer size of the universe I'd bet money on there being a lot of species out there that are intelligent and capable of scientific pursuits and technological invention. But I would also guess that they're among the rarer forms of life out there all things considered. There are simply a lot of barriers to developing that kind of intelligence and evolution really doesn't give a trout how intelligent you are. Natural selection only drives the development of traits that help life survive and thrive. It doesn't tend to give a trout if the thing letting you survive is intelligence, sheer size and brutality, or laser eyes. Survival is survival no matter how you get there.