yankel> was mentioned in public by rav shach as grounds for rejection of his opinion as automatic daat torah on many contemporary subjects .
ok, so it was not clear whether it was your words or you were quoting someone. I’ve looked again at this – I think this is probably in line with R Schach statements that a real gadol has to spend all day learning, rather than do other things – not just during his early years but continuously. I don’t think this was specific to college. If you think it is – maybe you can quote specific shitos of LR that were affected by his college education. This will be interesting to review.
More generally, I – as everyone else – understand the emphasis on Torah learning in last several generations giving all physical and spiritual disasters we endured. Still, does this mean that a true T’Ch should not know anything about modern chochma? Look, gemora has discussions on all matters current to them – agriculture, medicine, politics – and rabbis are able to discuss minute details of those issues and pasken about them. Gemora knows how many tefahim roots of different trees grow to the side, etc. Not counting T’Ch who were actually involved in various businesses and trades – surely they knew what they were doing. Taanis says that a doctor was visited by yeshiva (sic!) shel maale more often than Abaye – for his middos and work ethics. Presumably, the yeshiva shel maala was already aware how ineffective that bloodletting was, but still credited the doctor for the effort …
Given the tremendous growth of chochma in our times, it is silly to say that knowledge of modern science and technology is not necessary.