Co-authors of the research with the copy of Arcana Naturae Detecta in the Mexican Room of the National Library of Mexico. From left to right: Luis Felipe Jiménez García, Martha Eugenia Rodríguez Pérez, Parsifal Islas Morales, Yudy Tibaduiza, and Alberto Partida. Photo credit: Beatriz López García, IIB-BNM-HNM.
The study of Leeuwenhoek’s Arcana Naturae Detecta, published in the prestigious journal Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, United Kingdom, shows that the work was already in circulation by 1746 —just 24 years after its printing in Europe—, in a Mexico City that had, from that time on, been immersed in the vanguard of knowledge.
By Eduardo Estala Rojas*
A team of nine UNAM scholars, led by Dr. Parsifal F. Islas-Morales of the UNESCO Chair on Science Diplomacy and Heritage, discovered in the National Library of Mexico a unique 1722 copy of Arcana Naturae Detecta, the work with which the Dutch researcher Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) —considered the father of microbiology— shared his observations of the microscopic world.
“Leeuwenhoek was an innate researcher; he built microscopes and was the first human being to observe cells, protozoa, and bacteria. The Royal Society of London, published his work in English between 1673 and 1723 and honored him as a foreign member. The team research we carried out—Martha Romero, Martha Rodríguez, Alberto Partida, Yudy Tibaduiza, Ruy Echeverría, Luis Felipe Jiménez, Lourdes Segura, and myself, with the support of Adolfo Martínez Palomo—provides previously unpublished information about the reception of Leeuwenhoek’s work in Mexico in the 18th century. This two-year effort is published online in open access by the Royal Society, the very place where this story began 365 years ago,” said Dr. Islas-Morales, project leader and general coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Science Diplomacy and Heritage at UNAM.
The academic article is titled: Leeuwenhoek in Mexico: New paths in the global circulation of scientific knowledge, and it is already available to read in the academic journal Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London—considered the oldest scientific society in the world, founded in 1660, and where great minds such as Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, Darwin, and Leeuwenhoek himself—the subject of this study—have distinguished themselves. It is worth noting that this research was funded by UNAM and the Ministry of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI) of the Government of Mexico, with the support of the Institute of Bibliographic Research and UNAM’s Faculties of Medicine and Science.
“Arcana Naturae Detecta is the title of the book that our team found in the reserved collection of the National Library of Mexico (BNM). What makes the find remarkable is its rarity and its history. It consists of two volumes elegantly bound together in a single copy, richly illustrated with original engravings. On its first page it bears a handwritten inscription known as an Ex libris. It also bears a distinctive fire brand (marca de fuego). Both confirm that the book was acquired in 1746 for the library of the Carmelite College of Liberal Arts of San Joaquín, in Mexico City. The BNM copy may be considered the first to arrive to the continent and the only one with this kind of historical markings reported to date. The find also raises an underlying question: why was 18th-century Mexico interested in Leeuwenhoek’s work?” noted Dr. Islas-Morales.
“These historical markings indicate that Leeuwenhoek’s work reached a philosophical institution in Mexico City barely 24 years after its European edition. One must grasp the philosophical revolution that the microscope represented in the minds of the 18th century. Arcana Naturae Detecta means The Secrets of Nature Disclosed. The book’s cover, an exquisite engraving, represents the power of the scientific method and of microscopes to reveal the truth of things. To see cells without knowing what they were was a truth that, already in the 18th century, called into question at what scale life begins, how it originates, and what the place of the human being is in relation to the cosmos. It is a philosophical question that clearly interested the scientists and philosophers of New Spain, but that also laid the foundations of cell biology, scientific medicine, and evolution, and that continues to inspire research today,” explained Dr. Islas-Morales.
With this interdisciplinary perspective, in 2023 Dr. Parsifal F. Islas-Morales, together with Dr. Luis Felipe Jiménez—current director of UNAM’s Faculty of Science—and the researchers Christian Voolstra, María Mosqueira, and Anny Cárdenas of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, managed to solve a methodological problem and made the discovery of the archaeal nucleolus, considered a paradigm shift in biology. The academic article can be consulted in the scientific journal Frontiers in Microbiology, under the title: Ultrastructural and proteomic evidence for the presence of a putative nucleolus in an Archaeon.
“We hope that the discovery of Arcana Naturae Detecta will inspire people around the world to rediscover their scientific heritage, to value it, and to draw inspiration from it. This year at UNAM we celebrate 475 years of university presence in Mexico. Discoveries such as Arcana Naturae Detecta, overturn the prejudice of backwardness and reaffirm the need to know our scientific heritage in order to understand ourselves within the universal circulation of knowledge throughout history. By recognizing science as part of our culture, we will be able to see beyond our limits, as we have already done with the help of the microscope,” emphasized Dr. Islas-Morales.
Interest in writing the history of science from one’s own perspective has gained relevance around the world. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued the Recommendation on Open Science, in 2021, which addresses the importance of reclaiming local knowledge and histories. Meanwhile, some Arab and Asian countries have already established institutes dedicated to the rescue of their scientific heritage, such as the Sharjah International Foundation for the History of Arab and Muslim Sciences (SIFHAMS) in the United Arab Emirates.
Today, Mexico holds a leadership position in this field through the Institute of Bibliographic Research, National Library of Mexico (IIB-BNM) and the UNESCO Chair on Science Diplomacy and Heritage, the main promoters of the research project on Arcana Naturae Detecta. The IIB-BNM safeguards one of the most important bibliographic collections in Latin America. Under its current director, Dr. María Andrea Giovine Yañez, important alliances have been fostered for the study of its scientific heritage, especially with the UNESCO Chair on Science Diplomacy and Heritage.
The UNESCO Chair is a pioneering initiative worldwide, jointly operated by UNAM in Mexico and the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and its chairholders are the Mexican scientist and pacifist Ana María Cetto (recipient of two Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to international institutions) and the Macedonian historian Mesut Idriz, also director of the Sharjah International Foundation for the History of Arab and Muslim Sciences (SIFHAMS). Its mission is to promote critical research on the role of science in the world and its contribution to diplomacy through the study of the heritage of science and its social history in the peripheries of the so-called Western world. Four years after its founding, this Chair is an academic reference in its field, having succeeded in making scientific heritage a category in the cultural legislations of Mexico and Mexico City. In addition, each semester it offers the only science diplomacy course in Mexico, and each year it organizes an international symposium on science, diplomacy, and heritage.
For more information: https://unescochair-sdh.org/
- Eduardo Estala Rojas is the founding director of the Mexican Cultural Centre (MCC), Nottingham, United Kingdom. Email: contacto@mexicanculturalcentre.com
Sources consulted:
Islas-Morales P., et al., “Leeuwenhoek in Mexico: New paths in the global circulation of scientific knowledge” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 10 (2026) https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2026.0030 Accessed: September 2, 2026.
Leeuwenhoek, Antoni. Arcana naturae detecta. Ed. novissima, Auctior [et] correctior, Apud Joh. Arnold Langerak, 1722.https://catalogobnmx.iib.unam.mx/permalink/52BN_INST/1e9rcuo/alma990003446470108686 Accessed: July 28, 2026.
Islas-Morales, Parsifal F., et al. «Ultrastructural and proteomic evidence for the presence of a putative nucleolus in an Archaeon.» Frontiers in Microbiology 14 (2023):1075071.https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1075071/full Accessed: July 28, 2026.
UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science 2021: UNESCO. «UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.» UNESCO 34 (2021).https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379949_spa Accessed: July 28, 2026.
