Pedagogically, this is an argument against teaching physics using the historical development model. You end up with post hoc arguments and simplified narratives, and I think it it just makes life harder for undergraduate students. Maybe 'history of science' should be its own subject?

Some textbooks (e.g. Molecular Quantum Mechanics, Atkins & Friedman) take a more nuanced view. They present failures of classical calculations of the heat capacity of solids near absolute zero side by side with blackbody radiation:

> "Einstein recognized the similarity between this problem and black-body radiation, for if each atomic oscillator required a certain minimum energy before it would actively oscillate, then at low temperatures some would be inactive and the heat capacity would be smaller than expected."

Debye improved the theory by allowing atoms to oscillate with different frequencies. So looking back, one can say matter appears to be quantized, and this shows up at low temperatures, and radiation appears to be quantized, and this shows up at high frequencies - which is a nice symmetric argument, visible in hindsight, that probably helps students grasp the concept of the quantized harmonic oscillator (and why they need to learn about it).

One major development was Bose deriving Planck's radiation law using quantum statisical arguments (and no classical physics), with further development by Einstein c. 1924 - but this might be a difficult place to start from, teaching-wise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statisti...