Definition of "dialectics"
(philosophy, uncountable) A systematic method of argument that attempts to resolve the contradictions in opposing views or ideas.
Quotations
None of these processes and modes of thought enters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Dialectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin and ending. Such processes as those mentioned above are, therefore, so many corroborations of its own method of procedure.
1880, Friedrich Engels, chapter 2, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific