Not necessarily, I suppose. But I'm not talking about how magic works for Gandalf from Gandalf's POV here; to some random person watching Gandalf, what Gandalf does still causes some one specific effect rather than another.
That would certainly be doable.
I'm currently working on an alternate world with magic where Newton followed the Principia with a similarly insightful formalisation of how magic worked, where there was another paradigm shift around about the start of the twentieth century (corresponding roughly to the introduction of relativity and quantum mechanics) that led to industrialised magic and the history of the twentieth century being wildly different from our own, and where as of now another paradigm shift is in the making; because as a working scientist myself, one of the places that even very good depictions of systemic magic pretty much always fall down for me is in not having the feel of the cutting edge of organised research, it's always either an established system, or individual magic-geek wizard types pottering about on their own; so I've given up on waiting for it and decided to write it myself.
Cool...the cutting edge idea. Good luck with it. Sounts like an interesting new angle on the whole magic concept.
Right now, for my system, I'm kind of leaning away from the Harry Potter-ish, D&D-esque spell system. The things aren't so much spells as being able to connect to things around you and control them. Like, if you had the skill, you could "grab" the essence of a tree and bend it over like it was made of rubber. Or shape water by "grabbing" the essence of a puddle. Though i don't want it to exactly be element based. That's getting too much like Avatar the Airbender.
I think I like the idea of the natural energy of things being much like playdough in a skilled practicioner's hands - as long as you have enough material there, you can do anything. But first the practicioner has to make a connection with the energy inside the thing. Injecting/absorbing raw essence enables him/her to become essentially closer to a tree, a stone, a river, an animal, so he has a better handle over manipulating it.
Does that make sense? Something about it feels a little weak to me...but I can't quite put my finger on it.