Abstract
The paper aims at understanding why the notion of “atmosphere” has boomed recently in the Humanities. It presents an introductory survey of this concept, mostly relying on the neophenomenological radical externalisation of the affective. Started from psychiatry (Tellenbach) and philosophy (Schmitz’s phenomenology and Böhme’s aesthetics) the atmospheric approach provides now a wide application in all scientific fields that have to do with human and not strictly functional-measurable parameters.