I have always seen the expression 'carved in stone' used in the negative in sentences like: 'It is not carved in stone that…, Could this expression be used in the positive or, alternatively what other expression could I use to say that something is 'unchangeable' ?
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Nice catch.
My first thought was, why not? Reinvention can be a good thing, if you make incremental improvements (in the world of clichés, I believe that's called building a better mousetrap).
I wondered if maybe the idiom could be used positively or negatively, depending on the surrounding words. For example, I'd consider the expression:
Don't reinvent the wheel.
to be negative, as you describe. However, the phrase:
...continues to reinvent the wheel.
might have positive connotations, suggesting perpetual improvements. So, I looked for some examples. I did find this one:
The artist continually reinvents the wheel — constantly striving for a sublime composition of balance, harmony and refinement.
but the vast majority of the findings were indeed negative:
The idea behind design patterns is to not continually reinvent the wheel.
Moreover, lack of interchange with other teams also often leads researchers to continually reinvent the wheel.
Clients don't want to pay for suppliers to continually reinvent the wheel.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if the writer didn't mean to say:
Eminem has continued to reinvent himself, putting his life on display, through a bevy of syllable-heavy, metaphor-driven cuts.
Reinvention of the wheel seems to be a bad thing – a waste of time – but reinvention of self seems to be associated with quests to remain relevant, or on top of your game.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to call your cited usage incorrect, but I don't think an editor's call to maybe strive for a more apt metaphor would be out of order.
The earliest I can find the expression "set in stone" in Google books is 1830:
This square is enclosed by handsome iron railing, set in stone.
And of course this railing is literally set in stone, and not an occurrence of the metaphor you're asking about. This iron railing would indeed be fairly difficult to alter.
It's possible that the metaphor originated not from words that are set in stone, but objects.
Best Answer
A review of carved in stone in an ngram reveals mostly either literal usage (describing actual stonework) or negative usage.
There are occasional positive uses such as this description in Shark, Lauren St. John's biography of Greg Norman
A quote from Primo Levi about Holocaust survivors uses the phrase to indicate an indelible memory
The phrase forms the title of Manny Drukier's book, Carved in Stone: Holocaust Years, a Boy's Tale
In Modern American Usage, the authors acknowledge the common negative connotation, while pointing out the availablity of the affirmative meaning