I am interested in knowing if in the era preceding the observations that lead to the advent of Quantum Mechanics, anyone foresaw logically that a theory such as Quantum Mechanics is in a sense, "unavoidable".

I am not referring to a prediction of any of the technical details of the QM theory we have today, that of course is unlikely. I rather mean some prediction with regards to the particular and central feature of QM as a theory where the process of measurement is very central, both formally and conceptually, and as one which is deeply incorporated into the theory.

The motivation for the question, is that it seems possible that someone had postulated as a logical necessity, even before QM was "forced" on us, some future time when the very act of measurement itself has to be taken into account as a significant physical interaction that changes the state of the system, when the system is of a small enough scale. On that note, I need to clarify that I am not referring to techniques for handling various types of measurement uncertainties, clearly those were well known prior to QM and are not really referring to the same concept I am describing.

Please note I am not here debating whether that "logical" step of predicting a QM-like theory in the past is in itself valid or not -- it may very well be criticized and shown to be erroneous. I am only highlighting the point that it seems to me not impossible that someone may have thought alone those lines, and hence I'm curious if anyone in fact did. Also note, while my title is asking for physicists who speculated along those lines, it will be also interesting to know if any philosopher wrote something about it. However, I am most interested to know if any of the famous physicists such as Newton, Maxwell, Hamilton, etc. ever wrote something pertaining to this idea.

I am interested in knowing if in the era preceding the observations that lead to the advent of Quantum Mechanics, anyone foresaw logically that a theory such as Quantum Mechanics is in a sense, "unavoidable".

I am not referring to a prediction of any of the technical details of the QM theory we have today, that of course is unlikely. I rather mean some prediction with regards to the particular and central feature of QM as a theory where the process of measurement is very central, both formally and conceptually, and as one which is deeply incorporated into the theory.

The motivation for the question, is that it seems possible that someone had postulated as a logical necessity, even before QM was "forced" on us, some future time when the very act of measurement itself has to be taken into account as a significant physical interaction that changes the state of the system, when the system is of a small enough scale. On that note, I need to clarify that I am not referring to techniques for handling various types of measurement uncertainties, clearly those were well known prior to QM and are not really referring to the same concept I am describing.

Please note I am not here debating whether that "logical" step of predicting a QM-like theory in the past is in itself valid or not -- it may very well be criticized and shown to be erroneous. I am only highlighting the point that it seems to me not impossible that someone may have thought along those lines, and hence I'm curious if anyone in fact did. Also note, while my title is asking for physicists who speculated along those lines, it will be also interesting to know if any philosopher wrote something about it. However, I am most interested to know if any of the famous physicists such as Newton, Maxwell, Hamilton, etc. ever wrote something pertaining to this idea.