The term dialectic originates in the Greek expression for the art of conversation (διαλεκτικὴ τέχνη). So far as its great variety of meanings have anything in common, it is perhaps that dialectic is a method of seeking and sometimes arriving at the truth by reasoning, but even this general description, which to fit the variety of cases is so vague as to be valueless, fails to do justice to the Hegelian and Marxist notion of dialectic as a historical process. However, among the more important meanings of the term have been (1) the method of refutation by examining logical consequences, (2) sophistical reasoning, (3) the method of division or repeated logical analysis of genera into species, (4) an investigation of the supremely general abstract notions by some process of reasoning leading up to them from particular cases or hypotheses, (5) logical reasoning or debate using premises that are merely probable or generally accepted, (6) formal logic...