@Kyler Thatch  
I think that’s the difference between the likes of Twilight and Starswirl and, well, every unicorn ever. The most powerful are the ones who can do all that stuff. Of course, you’re still limited by what your special talent is, so not everyone’s Twilight, but… a Starlight Glimmer gets the way she is by hitting the books.

Let’s put it this way. Do you understand everyhting about your computer/laptop/tablet down to the miniscule details? Can you open it up and trace the circuits? Can you reverse-engineer the software and operating system?
 
Most people can’t do any of those. They understand how to make it do things, but they don’t know how it works. And even if they do, they don’t think about all that detail every time they use it. So even though it’s a technology that’s very well understood, for the average user, it’s functionally a kind of magic.
 
All of which is to say that just because the average unicorn uses magic while not understanding how it works, it doesn’t mean there’s nobody applying the scientific method to it. True, we don’t see any of that because that’s not what we’re watching the show for.

@Crazy☾
 
What general laws? It’s never stated what magic can and can’t do or exactly how it works. That’s deliberate and for narrative purposes.
 
Science attempts to examine and catalogue the nature of the universe and all it’s constitute pieces. Magic seems to be an innate ability of ponies which they use to interact with the world around them. They are fundamentally different things.
 
Just because it’s a academic field doesn’t make it science, for example History isn’t science.

@Huacaya  
That makes perfect sense, what with the huge amounts of studying put into magic in the MLP universe, and all of the general laws governing what can and can’t be done.
 
Wait, no it doesn’t.

The biggest difference is that fewer people are expected to understand science.

I disagree completely. Magic is eminently unknowable, and ‘just works’ which is the complete opposite of science.

She blinded me with science!