The position is a synthesis, and its two nineteenth century sources phrased it differently. Samson Raphael Hirsch, in Frankfurt, argued for Torah im derekh eretz, Torah together with the way of the world, meaning that secular learning and civic participation are not a concession to be minimised but a proper part of a religious life, provided that halakhah is not negotiated. He built a community that separated institutionally from the reforming majority around it while remaining fully engaged with German culture, which is a combination that requires constant explanation.
In the United States the formulation became Torah Umadda, Torah and secular knowledge, associated with Yeshiva University, where a student takes a full undergraduate degree alongside a full day of Talmud. Joseph B. Soloveitchik taught there from the 1940s and ordained a very large proportion of a generation of American Orthodox rabbis. His writing, particularly The Lonely Man of Faith and Halakhic Man, gave the position an intellectual account of itself rather than a merely practical one, describing a religious personality that is neither a mystic withdrawing from the world nor a scientist reducing it.
What follows in practice is a community whose members work in every profession, whose children attend day schools that teach both curricula seriously, and whose religious commitments, on kashrut, on sabbath, on family purity, are not visibly lighter than those of communities that keep more distance from the surrounding society.