Look at the Taz O’CH 47 for making the bracha laasok bedivrei Torah making learning a business of give and take, to deepen oneself into it. The Chasam Sofer in Nedorim there explains that they considered learning Torah as a hechsher mitzva, to know what to do, so they held that it needs no bracha before learning. As a melitza the Chasam Sofer interprets the statement that they praised one for his secular knowledge first over his Torah knowledge.
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