Teorías evolutivas en los cursos de Zoología y en los discursos de fin de periodo académico en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1868-1875

The Universidad Nacional de los Estados Unidos de Colombia was founded in 1868, a decade after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). At the School of Natural Sciences, Fidel Pombo taught zoology courses between 1868 and 1873, and his students Emilio Álvares and José Vicente Rocha wrote end-of-year speeches. Other students and teachers also prepared speeches in different contexts. Based on the courses’ syllabus and the speeches, we considered the following questions: Could Pombo’s zoological teachings be framed within the modern biological tradition, or did he conceive nature within the background of the pre-darwinian evolutionary ideas that emerged during the 19th century, or within the theory of evolution by natural selection proposed by Darwin and Wallace?, and did the speeches of the students and teachers express creationist or evolutionist tendencies? The analysis of historical sources allowed us to conclude that Fidel Pombo’s zoology class followed directly Cuvier´s classification system, or, indirectly, the book Lessons in Natural History, written by his disciple Louis Doyére. Although Cuvier belongs to the catastrophic and essentialist French school, it can be inferred from the student speeches that other transformist authors such as Buffon, Lamarck, and Geoffroy were discussed in Pombo’s courses. Other student speeches manifested a positivist, but fundamentally creationist vision. Enrique Cortés, a professor of morals, was the first Colombian academic to quote Darwin, but his thinking is nonetheless Spencerian.