An attempt to reconstruct of Benedykt Dybowski’s views, based on speech “Glance at historical development of zoology”.

The Paper shows the scientific views of Benedykt Dybowski based on his inaugural speech delivered in 1885, at The University of L’viv. It was a time of a stormy reception of the Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was often considered as contradictory to the common view of man’s place in universe, given mostly by religious and philosophical concepts. In that context, Dybowski as a well-known zoologist laid content of Darwin’s idea in comparison with history of science. He pointed out some resemblance between the development of cosmogony and zoology, showing theory of evolution as a result of earlier evolutionary ideas and crystallization of the scientific method. Dybowski called for naturalism and eliminating all kind of supernatural factors in science, and world’s phenomenon explanations, renouncing essentialism. As Dybowski was a great admirer of Darwin’s theory, he was a science enthusiast as well, regarding it as a kind of an assignment and a vocation.

Keywords: Benedykt Dybowski, philosophy of nature, history of zoology, Darwin’s theory reception, evolutionism.