Wheels and meaningfulness

In a meeting today an associated engineer, trying not to do a complete rework of a major portion of a configuration stated, “Let’s not reinvent the wheel.” Reinventing the wheel is a phrase that means to duplicate a basic method that has already previously been created or optimized by others. In theory that could well be a great argument. But at issue is there is a difference between theory and practice and in practice theory is not always practical.
Reinvent the wheel. OK, isn’t the wheel the most reinvented thing in the world? I mean we are not driving our cars on large roughly hewn rock rounds. With the exception of Fred Flintstone, our wheels are almost perfectly round and are made of the latest materials. There are thousands if not millions of variations to the wheel theme. Maybe that is the meaningfulness of this whole thought. To me, it seems there are two primary reasons for reinventing the wheel: 1) to adapt it to a thing to a new context and 2) to learn how it works. Often when in a new situation or new context it is probably better to take it apart and reinvent the silly thing.