Natural philosopher dissecting its insect (9)
I believe the answer is:
scientist
'natural philosopher' is the definition.
(I know that natural philosopher can be written as scientist)
'dissecting its insect' is the wordplay.
'its insect' anagrams to 'SCIENTIST'.
However, I am not sure how this is indicated.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for scientist that I've seen before include "Is it insects, strangely, the learned person knows about?" , "Researcher - boffin" , "Person conducting experiments" , "`Tis nicest kind of specialist" , "entomologist maybe" .)