Re: The building blocks of the universe.
There is a fantasy novel by Sharon Green called "The Far Side of Forever".
In it the magicians did their thing by seeing things (atoms? this uberdna you refer to) and then describing them you can do magic (the alter you mention above).
So sure, I once played a character based onthis concept. I had a vpp for enhanced senses only, and then a multipower with my various powers with that description as my special effects.
Incantations were the descriptions and gestures were shorthand, thus the phrase " a gesture is worth a thousand words".
There was also 'black' magic. Which wasn't inherently evil, just very dangerous and hard to explain from the book (it's been awhile since I've read it). It was when you were trying to describe things that didn't 'exist' or concepts. Like trying to describe the square root of -1 version in that language, (okay okay you can you geometric interpretation, but that's more difficult, so, see, more difficult.)