Philosophers David Lavery and Jean Gebser pointed to the fourteenth century introduction of perspective in art as indicating an underlying alteration of perception: the artist now stood completely apart from others and from nature, observing them at a distance from the fixed point of reference inside his head. Gebser’s recognition of the broad implications of perspective led him to speak of the Renaissance as ushering in a “perspectival world,” one involving an “emergent objectifying consciousness” with a “heightening of awareness…accompanied by an increase of personal ego-consciousness.”