Now that you mention it, this is kind of the premise of the Star Ocean series. It has "symbology" (as it's called in the third installment, Till the End of Time), which is basically the ability to manipulate nature to do "magical"-seeming things by formation of particular symbols. The people in these worlds harness this capability for standard engineering purposes: they build air-conditioning units that draw their coldness from application of specific symbols.

The plot of End of Time revolves around a professor combining symbological powers with those of genetics.