Question

In an article by Rabbi Ohad Fixler
https://www.etzion.org.il/he/talmud/seder-nashim/massekhet-kiddushin/%D7%97%D7%96%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%90%D7%A6%D7%9C-%D7%97%D7%96%D7%9C
Rabbi Soloveitchik is quoted as saying:
Allow me to add something very important: not only the Jewish laws, but also the presumptions that the Sages instituted as a basis for adjudicating Torah law, cannot be challenged. Do not lay a hand not only on the laws but also on the presumptions, because the presumptions of which the Sages spoke are not based on passing, changing psychological behavior patterns, but on fixed ontological principles (ontology = that part of metaphysics that deals with the essence of being), rooted in the very depths of the metaphysical human personality, which cannot change like the heavens above.
Take for example the presumption—which I am told they wanted to put up for discussion—of “It is better to sit as two than to sit as a widow” (Kiddushin 7a), meaning that a woman prefers to live as part of a couple rather than alone.

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, in his article Torah Is Good Together with Worldly Inheritance
https://www.etzion.org.il/sites/default/files/ral-torah_and_culture.pdf
on page 2 writes:
However, even with this enrichment, the spiritual contribution of general wisdom has not yet been exhausted. Beyond fertilization, completion, and aside from illuminating Torah focal points or broadening Torah horizons, general culture develops, in breadth and power, areas and capacities to which Torah, in its precise and narrow definition, hardly relates. Knowledge of the Holy One’s world—not only in its ideal halakhic form but in its actual embodiment, in the universe and in history; shaping and understanding the world of human creativity, especially the realm of art, in all its branches; probing the depths of the human soul, with all its recesses and cracks—in all these, Torah, in the accepted sense, deals only superficially. Of course, since Jewish law is meant to be embodied in physical and human reality, engaging in it includes an abundance of assumptions and determinations regarding its nature: “There is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date,” “It is impossible for the upper one to come before the lower one has come,” and so on and so forth. However, normative and operative Jewish law is always at the center, not the reality in which it is implemented. Every yeshiva student is quite familiar with the Torah world’s aversion to disputes about “reality.” Great Torah scholars did sometimes engage these broader planes, even within halakhic frameworks, such as Maimonides’ Laws of the Foundations of the Torah and Laws of Character Traits. Particular attention was directed to the psychological plane, and the Mussar movement is of course a prominent example of this. Even so, comprehensive and fundamental discussions in these areas are certainly not the focus of the Torah world, and the earlier description, “superficially,” remains in place.
There are, of course, those who maintain that precisely because this is the state of affairs, these fields have no value. But one who holds that contemplating the tale told by the heavens and the story declared by the firmament belongs to one’s spiritual existence; one for whom remembering the days of old is important in its own right and also helps him grapple with understanding each generation; one who sees penetrating into all that is deep and human as a moral and human task—such a person will find in the wisdom that stands alongside Torah (according to the Sages’ definition) a source of understanding, sensitivity, and spiritual inspiration.

If I understand correctly, in these words Rabbi Lichtenstein is in effect criticizing (politely) his father-in-law. He gives an example of a presumption that anyone who understands economics on the level of a housewife knows is not relevant, at least not in the Western world. And from here one can seemingly continue and say that someone who knows the nature of economics and society in today’s Western world will not accept “it is better to sit as two.” Shulamit Shahar, in The Status of Women in the Middle Ages, notes that until the modern era a woman without a supporting man could remain alive only as a nun or a prostitute.
What does the Rabbi think? Does Rabbi Lichtenstein really disagree with Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik?