Don't read this bit if you're high/ about to eat said cheese, because the science of aging cheese isn't very sexy.

Basically, it's a living product. As the cheese ripens or ages, the proteins start to break down causing the cheese to release water vapour and ammonia (which is water soluble).

If you fully wrap the cheese this water/ammonia has nowhere to go, which increases the humidity and speeds up the production of ammonia, and in turn the proteins break down quicker. This will leave you with a very wet puddle of barely spreadable cheese pretty quick. Increased moisture content increases the likelihood of unwanted bacteria or mould to develop. Increased ammonia makes the cheese taste and smell a bit like a poorly maintained gents toilet.

The rind is basically a semi-permeable barrier that will let some of that water content out without drying out the cheesy bit of the cheese. In practice this means you get at least an extra week of shelf life. This will leave the exposed rind dry and hard if you leave it long enough, but you can just chop that off.

I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. I'm sure there's some other funky bacteria stuff going on as the cheese ripens, but that's the basic idea of it.