This is a question i got in a religious discussion, and it made me think.
How do scientists get much of their know knowledge before they are finished at University?
Do they not get examples and material from other scientists who studied the field before them?
Or do each scientist suddenly have their understanding of all the scientific material they need to understand what they see in front of them?
Why is it different when a spiritual person say.
It is written in the scriptures or through my teacher i have gained this understanding.
How is it different than any scientist learing his/her field?
It is different in the sense that what the students learn at uni from the work from scientists that came before them, is not to be "just believed". All of it is independently verifiable. Every experiment repeatable. Every piece of evidence open to repeated study.
Also, science is
progressive. Meaning that new knowledge is build upon already gathered knowledge from before.
For example... Newton came up with the laws of motion and a model to explain gravity. It worked well in context of medium speeds with medium gravity sources at the macroscopic level of physics.
Then, building further on that knowledge, we found out it no longer works when approaching light speed or with extreme gravity etc. Enter Einstein. He then comes up with relativity as a fix.
Then at a later time, some engineer takes relativity theory and figures out a way to build a GPS system - which needs to account for relativistic effects in order to accurately pinpoint locations on the planet (since the satelites orbit the earth at high speed, the flow of time relative to stationary objects on earth is different, so the internal clocks of those satellites need to be calibrated to account for that timeflow difference).
If relativity were inaccurate, then GPS wouldn't work.
Likewise, if you try and build GPS satellites without accounting for relativistic effects, then the system doesn't work.
In summary: it is different because it is very results based AND very independently verifiable.