As Joonas said, this comes down to a distinction between subjective and objective genitive. When a noun is derived from a verb, a subjective genitive indicates the logical subject of that verb ("human knowledge" = humans knowing something), and an objective genitive indicates its logical object ("human knowledge" = something knowing humans). See A&G ยง348 and thereabouts for more discussion of this.
In Latin, the most common way to express both of these is with a plain genitive (scientia hominum). However, there were a few particular ways to get around this ambiguity.
In particular, objective genitives could often be replaced with prepositional phrases, while subjective genitives generally could not. (For example, Cicero generally uses odium alicuius to mean "someone's hatred", and odium in aliquem to mean "hatred of someone".) Conversely, subjective genitives could be linked to nouns by esse, while objective genitives generally could not.
Extending this to scientia, see Cicero's Pro Sulla, where he links a subjective genitive with esse and replaces an objective genitive with a prepositional phrase:
Nam cuius scientiam de omnibus constat fuisse, eius ignoratio de aliquo purgatio debet videri.
For when a particular person is assumed to have knowledge of everyone [involved], his ignorance about someone ought to be seen as proof of innocence.
Literally, here, it's knowledge concerning everyone (prepositional phrase with de), and this knowledge is assumed to be belonging to someone (genitive linked with esse), making it unambiguous which is the subject and which is the object of scio.